This invention relates to surgical apparatus and particularly to an array of universal surgical retractor frames comprising a system of retractor frames assemblable into a wide variety of surgical retractor units of different sizes and shapes adaptable for use on different portions of the bodies of surgical patients in performing a wide variety of operations.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,398 of Frank B. Scott, of which the assignee is the same as this invention and which patent is incorporated by reference in this specification, discloses a surgical retractor comprising an annular frame, which includes two sections hingedly connected, which are contoured to fit the surface of a surgical patient and around the exterior periphery of which are spaced apart notches into which both or one end portions of elastic tubing stay members are insertable and held by friction. The stay members of the Scott retractor extend across the interior of the retractor frame in contact with body tissue as a supporting or pinching member or have a tissue holding hook at one end which hooks into the tissue for retracting it and holding wounds open during the surgical operative process, as more fully described in the Scott patent. However, the surface body contours of different portions of the bodies of each surgical patient vary widely, and the same body portions of different patients vary considerably in size, e.g., an adult and a child, so that a wide variety of shapes and sizes of retractors is needed for surgical retractors of the general nature disclosed in the Scott patent. The hinged portions of a retractor must also be manipulated differently in some operations than in others. For example, in a mastectomy the two segments of a retractor must be rotatable relative to one another through 360.degree. during the operation for raising the skin, which the Scott retractor of U.S. Pat. No. 4,274,398 will not allow. Further, different diameter elastic tubing is utilized as stay members for different purposes and patients, and the notches in the retractor must be contoured to frictionally hold the various sized tubes, e.g., adult stay member tubing conventionally has a 0.125 inch outside diameter and a 0.062 inch inside diameter, whereas pediatrics stay member tubing has a 0.085 inch outside diameter and a 0.040 inch inside diameter.